One term you never want anyone to use to describe what’s going on in your head is “brain rot.” Unfortunately, it’s becoming a common theme that’s making the rounds in the medical literature these days. It refers to effects on our minds in this modern era of social media and ultra “short attention span theater.” You might remember “Short Attention Span Theater” from back in the 80s and early 90s featuring brief segments of stand-up comedy, movie scenes, television sketches, and short video clips aimed at a quick laugh. These days society has been condensed even further than that into a whirlwind of 30-second sound bites and social media videos. Reasonable estimates are that more than 2 billion (yeah, that’s a “b”)—a quarter of the world’s population—spend significant hours of their days on video platforms. Adolescents and young adults (13-34) make up about 80% of these viewers. Surveys show that people spend an average of 1½ hours a day watching videos; that’s threefold more than the average of 27 minutes just 6 years ago. People are watching the latest trends in entertainment, cultural standards, “influencers,” and even news information that’s now wrapped into “short-form video” (SFV) platforms. They last from a few seconds to about a minute and totally suck the attention of users right into their phones.
It’s these SVFs that are leading to “brain rot,” cognitive deterioration, attention deficits, and emotional desensitization associated with the current digital obsession and brief sound bite culture. SFV overexposure is also linked to depression, anxiety, and addiction, especially among kids and young adults. Recently, research has raised concerns that excessive indulgence in SFVs may selectively reorganize brain activity, with potentially harmful effects on cognitive and emotional functioning, particularly damaging attention regulation and self-control. This carries considerable cognitive costs, including poorer working memory, reduced verbal processing, and diminished activation of some really important neural networks involved in information processing. The study enrolled 57 participants who viewed either a continuous long video or multiple short videos matched for duration and content. Memory was tested with recall tasks and brain wave activity was measured with my favorite brain test that we’ve talked about before, functional MRI. Short video exposure led to poorer memory accuracy compared to the long video views. MRI imaging revealed reduced activation and nerve connectivity in parts of the brain associated with memory performance and, not surprisingly, addiction. The researchers concluded that “use of short videos impairs memory by disrupting brain systems involved in information integration, cognitive control, and semantic processing, providing neurobiological evidence of the cognitive costs of fragmented media exposure.” None of this is good.
The reason SFVs can lead to cognitive harm is because the brain is limited in its capacity to process sensory stimuli from our surroundings. Instead of trying to take in everything around, the brain relies on a capability to focus attention and allocate cerebral resources according to immediate demands and urgencies of the moment. Attention can be categorized into two distinct functions: bottom-up attention, referring to attention aimed at outside events (like SFVs), and top-down attention steered by internal guidance based on prior experience, knowledge, plans, and current goals. The authors of this attention study conclude, “with a limited capacity to process information in the brain, attention is an indispensable cognitive process. Being able to ignore unnecessary information when one needs to engage in a behavior but also being able to detect possibly life-threatening changes in the environment at the same time require quick yet precise neural responses. Regardless of the origin of information, attention is allocated to an object or location that evokes the highest activity at the moment.” This is a very fancy way of describing the distraction that short, intense cell phone videos specifically engineered to grab and hold user’s attention impose on the brain. Constantly bombarding the brain’s attention capacity with “bottom-up” sensory input and stimulation from attention-seizing video content overwhelms cerebral capacity to make decisions based on that internally stored knowledge, experience, judgement, and overall cerebral situational awareness; hence—brain rot. This kind of cognitive impairment is not something we should be bringing into the cockpit and could seriously compromise our safety in the sky.
Proof of the social and individual damage that these attention-grabbing platforms are doing is right here in today’s headlines; just apply “Sutton’s Rule” and “follow the money.” It’s named after Willie Sutton, the infamous bank robber from the 1940s. Willie was in shackles, being hauled up the courthouse steps on the way to jail, when a reporter shouted out to ask him why he robbed all those banks. Sutton turned around and gave a simple but enduring answer, “’Cause that’s where the money is.” In a massive admission of the harm that these attention-stealing platforms cause, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, agreed to settle a lawsuit brought by 29 states for almost $18 billion (yeah, another “b”) and implement restrictions on teen use. That’s a whole lot of money to follow. The settlement is an acknowledgement that these tech giants designed their platforms to suck the attention of our kids and addict children to their use, ignoring safety concerns of harm. The platforms were designed to take advantage of that “top-down, bottom-up” attention-grabbing way the brain’s attention system works.
Preoccupation with cell phone video entertainment and communication has also led to significant behavioral changes in our society—even the way we talk with each other. In an interesting review, “Sliding into Silence,” the authors looked at estimates of daily spoken words for 2,200 participants ranging in age from 10 to 94 over the span of 14 years from the United States, Mexico, Australia, and Europe. The report estimated the average number of spoken words per day of 12,792, about 30% lower than a prior study from 2007 showed using the same method. When younger participants were separated out the decrease was more significant—45% fewer spoken words. Their conclusion was, “The time period of our data collection coincides with the rise in digital communication, such as texting, emailing, or social media.” We’ve all experienced frustrations with others who are just totally oblivious to everyone and everything as they gaze at their cell phones, obstructing things around them. Even worse, and much more dangerous, is encountering someone driving on the road totally head down and tuned out while they gaze at the screen on their lap while blocking traffic and swerving from lane to lane. The more time spent heads down with your attention directed at cell phones, the less time and cerebral bandwidth your brain has to be in the present, solve important problems, and make critical decisions. All critical safety skills here on the ground and especially up in the air.
The takeaway from all of this is pretty simple: put your cell phone down for a while, look up at the world around you, and interact with people in your life. Don’t get sucked into SFV platforms and let your brain rot; it’s not coming back from that. Keep your attention and focus, especially in the cockpit, and as always, FLY SAFE!
